Saloon preserves spirit of Old West

Innkeeper balances history of Jerome with modern life

JEROME - The only dance-hall girls in the Spirit Room, the saloon on the first floor of the Connor Hotel on Main Street, stand frozen midkick in a 1960s-era mural that hangs above the bar.

And they're not exactly girls.

Bob Wood, the saloon's bearded cleanup guy and daytime fixture at the end of the bar, chuckles when he points out to first-time patrons that the "girls" are guys in dance drag, a choice by the artist that no one at the Spirit Room can explain these days.

"Not something you see every day," Wood says, reaching for a beer bottle.

The mural exudes the quirky character that visitors seek when they come to Jerome. But with its images of a cowboy and a frontier town, the mural captures the flavor of the Old West -- even in a room where an Internet-ready jukebox has replaced the player piano and where a reggae band can take the stage.

Anne Conlin, the owner of the hotel and bar, likes to think about the history of her establishment, about Jerome's heyday, when the dusty streets buzzed with miners thirsty for whiskey and businessmen in search of a cheap room, even one without its own bathroom. She likes to think she has preserved the good parts of that history.

In this art-inspired tourist town, dotted with its share of small inns and bed-and-breakfasts, Conlin operates an old-fashioned saloon and hotel. The 12 rooms have real keys that hang on hooks behind a glass cabinet door. The front desk, tucked in a corner of the gift shop, has a register for guests. In a drawer, there is a separate notebook to track the building's less-corporeal inhabitants.

At the same time, she has to run a business, so she has outfitted each room with a flat-screen TV and satellite remote, added whirlpool baths to some rooms and hired a bar manager who updates a website and looks for ways to better use social media.

"I think about the different lives and dramas that must have passed through this hotel that are now swept away," Conlin says. "We have a wonderful history, but you have to balance history with conveniences. ... Guests do want a nice TV."

Shift from upscale lodging to attraction

The Connor Hotel was built by David Connor in 1898. That makes it among the oldest buildings in a place where old actually means something. But like the mural in the bar, the Connor and the Spirit Room are not exactly a picture of the movie-set Old West boarding house and saloon. Miss Kitty doesn't work here; never has.

For many years, the Connor catered to businessmen, who paid one dollar a night for what was considered upscale frontier lodging. The rooms, 26 in all, were small, but lit by electric lights. They offered an individual call bell and a stove for heat. Guests shared a single bathroom.

The bar space housed a cafe and, for a while, a small pharmacy. No saloon, no dance-hall girls, no liquor until the Spirit Room opened in the 1950s. The bar has since developed its own reputation as a watering hole and music venue.

Other hotels, lost now to history, offered a bawdier experience. A red-light district thrived on Hull Street, a hairpin curve below Main, until 1913, when reform-minded citizens outlawed houses of ill-repute downtown.

"It was a booming copper town," Conlin said. "They called it the 'billion dollar copper town.' Fifteen thousand people lived here at the peak. It was vibrant, alive, but still hardscrabble."

The Connor building actually burned down several times in its early years, not an uncommon calamity in a mining town. The owners rebuilt it, two stories and a basement, with bricks and mortar, an unconventional step at a time when wood structures seemed more practical and easier to disassemble if the ore ran out.

And the ore ran out in the 1950s, sending Jerome into a spiral that had produced so many ghost towns across the West. The Connor was no longer the upscale hotel and, by the 1960s, had become a flophouse, one with a certain amount of character, but a flophouse nonetheless.

"It was a neat Old West flophouse, but it was kind of grungy, less than reputable," Conlin said. "The rooms were rented out in the bar."

Conlin's family bought the building in 1980 and began the task of renovating it, hoping to attract the visitors who had rediscovered Jerome as an art community. Those visitors like their history, but also like the wide-screen TVs.

"The rooms are more expensive now," Conlin said. "But you don't have to share a bathroom with 25 other guests."

Spirit Room gains personality from guests

The Spirit Room is a beer and whiskey bar. In that way, it hasn't changed much from the frontier saloon that sat on every Western Main Street. On the other hand, those saloons didn't have much call for martinis or cosmopolitans.

"I make martinis sometimes and cosmos," said David Zuniga, who works day shifts at the bar for reasons that will become apparent soon. "There's not much I can't make. You tell me what's in it, I'll make it for you. But really, we're a beer and whiskey bar. That's what we sell most."

The clientele gives the bar its own personality, though the diversity is typical of Jerome. In an hour on a recent afternoon, Zuniga served a group of bikers who stopped in on their way up the mountain and a group of women who had been hitting the town's shops. Even Zuniga contributes to the scene with artist credentials, burnished with the bronze castings he creates in his off hours.

The saloon sits on one of the most visible corners of town, Main Street and Jerome Avenue, next to the old Liberty Theatre, where they still screen old movies from time to time.

Inside, the main room is big enough for a bar, a small stage and a dozen or more tables that sit beneath old pressed-tin ceilings. The sign on the front door lists the capacity as 100 people and that seems about right if you don't want an elbow in your beer.

"Tending bar really hasn't changed that much since the old days," said Zuniga, who took the job about four years ago. "You still talk to customers, you still kick 'em out when they get too rowdy, you still deal with guys like this -- ." He winks at Wood, the cleanup guy and hard-core regular, who is nursing another beer.

Upstairs at the Spirit Room, through a window above the bar, Holly Penland takes in her own view of the room and the business. The bar's manager since earlier this year, Penland spends much of her day crunching numbers, looking for ways to bring more people inside, searching for a band that will work cheap and still draw a crowd.

"It's a lifestyle," she said of her job. "I'm here at all hours and I'm always thinking about it."

Running a saloon in Jerome is as off-kilter as the streets and sidewalks that climb up Cleopatra Hill through downtown. The busiest times are Saturday and Sunday afternoon, when daytime visitors crowd the streets. Many of them head home before dark, not quite certain they want to navigate the steep streets in the starlight.

Visitors keep record of spooky encounters

As a modern saloon keeper, Anne Conlin worries about some of the same things as her counterpart of a century ago. Keeping the rooms clean. Quieting the rowdies. Ordering enough beer. Some things are new. Internet access. Satellite TV. Flavored vodkas.

And then there are the ghosts.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, for a freewheeling Old West town, Jerome is known for its population of the formerly living. Conlin hears from guests upset that they may have experienced a ghostly visit and from those upset that they did not.

"I keep an open mind," she says cautiously. "If you come here specifically looking for a ghost, you may find it."

Conlin heard from enough guests about unexplained happenings that she started a ghost journal and now encourages the haunted to record their brush with the other side. One such entry:

"Room 2, 10-30-11: Went to bed, front room on trundle bed. Very tired and started to drift off to sleep. Then saw transparent head of man with glasses coming out of wall behind bed. It disappeared, then felt a heaviness over my whole body. I froze then finally let out a scream awaiting roommate. When she tapped my shoulder the feeling disappeared."

Zuniga, the bartender, tells his own story. He was in the Spirit Room one night after closing, counting the take. He stacked some red Solo cups on a shelf, then turned. The cups flew off the shelf and crashed to the floor.

"It creeped me out," he said. "I don't know what to believe, but I told the manager I didn't want to work nights anymore."

Little of what Conlin and her crew do approach such thrills or romance. On any given day, Conlin orders supplies, oversees repairs and renovations and pays bills. On busy weekends, she helps run the gift shop that opens out onto Main Street.

"I can and do occasionally do most of the jobs in the hotel," she said.

Conlin thinks there is a universal nature to running a hotel and a saloon, one that lasts through time.

"You're behind a counter, in a bar, drinks are served, money changes hands, inhibitions are loosened," she said. "In the hotel, we rent rooms and clean up after. It's still the same essential experience."